Radio, Audience, and Exploration

Writing is lonely work. But it is not always solitary. Despite the isolation that I sometimes feel pounding out text on my laptop, I work in the presence of an audience, or rather, a perceived audience. The perceived audience is a tough crowd usually, tougher than the real one. It is with me as I write this — sitting at the oak table at the Eastham Public Library– watching me.

My perceived audience is made up of three groups: academics who work on the same subject as me (I know their names and see their faces), academics who work in the same or overlapping disciplines (hazier) and everybody else: non-specialists who are interested in the Arctic, or exploration, or who typed in the wrong search term on Google.

In graduate school, I paid attention to the first two groups. In particular, I tried to interpret the reactions of the specialists. Nothing that I wrote, at that point, seemed likely to find its way into the hands of lay readers, so I didn’t trouble myself with them.

Mapping out a graduate essay was like planning a war game: anticipating threats and finding tactical responses. I became adept at different weapon systems. My arsenal included the obscure, the arcane, and the highly theoretical.

Planning papers in graduate school.

This has changed over the last decade as I have started writing and lecturing for a broader audience. The lay audience that once sat at the back of the room has edged closer to the front. This is not simply because they make up a larger percentage of my readership.

It is because they ask the best questions.

For example, last week I was a guest on WNPR’s Where We Live show about exploration. No one who produced or called in to the show was a specialist or an academic. Nor was the host, John Dankosky, an exploration expert (although he’s a whip-smart journalist).

In the studio

Yet the questions were tough and incisive. “At the beginning of the 21st century, what’s left to explore?” “Do Americans have a special relationship with exploration?”

Dankosky raised one of the best questions after the show was over. “Why do politicians defend human space flight as a jobs program for engineers and astronauts? Aren’t these the windfalls of discovery rather than the heart? Would we defend money given to artists through National Endowments for the Arts as a great way to employ artists?